Pro-Coup Lobbyist Lanny Davis' Game Plan For Honduras

Memo Reveals “Rapid Response” Campaign Model To Back Lobo Government in Washington DC

More details have come to light relating to former Clinton White House official Lanny Davis' (pictured right) recent lobbying contract with the Honduras government. In a November letter (PDF) addressed to Honduras president Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo and the country's ambassador Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro, Davis writes that he'll focus on two objectives. One seeks to win more tax dollars from US coffers, and the other is a strategy to drown out accurate media reports that have been inconvenient for the government since a coup d'etat on June 28, 2009.

Davis suggests “continuous and repeated” meetings with members of the US Congress, the White House, and the Department of Commerce, with a specific focus on the State Department, currently headed by Yale Law School friend Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the media front he proposes creating "a systematic informational program with major US media, Internet, and social network sites to get a more positive narrative about Honduras," including “a 'campaign' model: a rapid response capability to counter any distortions or inaccurate media reports or innuendo."

"So much of the difficulty in the post June 28, 2009 events was due to a failure of instantaneous factual communication to the administration as well as US (and global) media about what happened in Honduras," Davis contends in the letter, which was included in a federal document obtained by Narco News.

Before being hired by the Honduras government in December, Davis worked for the Business Council of Latin America after the coup to promote “facts” and policies in Washington DC that supported the ousting of democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, an act that was widely condemned by the international community and the Obama administration after it happened.

Even with countless media reports documenting the de facto coup government's orders to shut down media outlets and suspend civil liberties, in the letter Davis brags that he lobbied for the “recognition of the coming election of a new president,” coup supporter Lobo, which he writes served as a “key positive turning point” when the State Department recognized results from the November 2009 election. Under the new Lobo government, there are well-documented human rights violations and assassinations against organizers and journalists that continue with impunity.

With the contract, government officials in Honduras will be given “special reports” from the Beltway on a weekly or monthly basis, according to the letter. Davis proposes holding meetings with “editorial writers, reporters, and opinion analysts in the Washington media” to push a new Honduras narrative, which includes prepping members of the coup regime before they appear before reporters.

For money, Davis writes in the federal document that a key political objective will be to assist Honduras with renewing its agreement with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US government-financed corporation co-managed by Hillary Clinton. Following Zelaya's ousting, the organization continued to give $6.5 million to the coup regime.

The services will cost the Honduras government $20,000 a month, with the contract lasting until the end of March. That doesn't include costs for transportation and ground expenses (Davis notes he prefers to travel by business class). Apparently it's a fair price to pay for the Honduras government, especially if it means getting a bigger piece of US foreign assistance money or further distorting the ugly reality of what's really happening in Honduras.